Thursday, December 21, 2006

Blowing Up at the Computer

My bank decided they needed to up their security policies for online banking. They explained it was due to the increase in identity theft. I can understand the need to cover their electronic asses, but the selection of "carefully researched" questions lead me to having a hissy fit on the phone with some bank employee. I had three questions to provide a security answer for; each question had a choice of eight questions to choose from. The first set of questions wasn't too hard to choose; one asked me which college I went to (so they assume I went to college). This was out of 8 choices, and all the others asked me about my spouse or my child. The second set of questions was more bothersome. Four out of the eight asked me questions about my child. One asked which city my parents were married in. (I have no clue and they are dead.) One asked me about my spouse. One asked me about my father's youngest sibling (what if he was an only child? actually he was a twin.) And the last one asked what is the nickname of my youngest sibling. Well I'm the youngest, and I sure as heck am not going to put my own name down for a security question.

I didn't look closely at the third set of questions; I figured they were as biased as the first set.

Whoever "carefully researched" these questions all had a close-knit, multi-sibling extended family, none had pets, all were married and college educated. Surely, everyone who uses online banking must have all these common attributes.

After getting nowhere on the phone with these assclowns I went ahead and made up answers for all the questions. The answers had nothing to do with the questions and everything to do with profanity. Certainly that is an answer I can remember.